An object, such as a grinding wheel, frequently must be cut or “worked/reworked” or “formed” in order to allow the object to achieve a desired working surface finish. By way of example and without limitation, a grinding wheel requires a new working surface finish after some period of usage due to the associated usage wear. This new working surface is typically achieved by selectively cutting or otherwise abrasively engaging the working surface in order to create a relatively smooth finish. It should thus be understood that the terms “working”, “reworking”, “cutting”, and “forming” in this Application, all describe the process of creating a desired and relatively smooth working surface on a working surface of a wheel, or other object, by cutting and/or abrasively engaging the working surface.
While current techniques and strategies do provide the desired working surface on the targeted object, they suffer from some drawbacks. By way of example and without limitation, these techniques and strategies do not consistently provide desired surface tolerances, undesirably and structurally degrade the object and, in many situations, even cause structural damage to the targeted object, and require a relatively long period of time to perform. Such “uneven” tolerances will cause the object to perform poorly and such structural degradation may cause the object to be “valueless”, thereby further increasing the cost of the overall process.
There is therefore a need and it is one non-limiting object of the invention to provide a method and an apparatus to overcome some or all of these previously delineated drawbacks and to, by way of example and without limitation, provide a method and an apparatus to selectively work, re-work, and/or cut and/or form an object, such as a grinding wheel, which overcomes some or all of the previously delineated drawbacks of prior techniques and strategies.